Irritability and anxiety on Testosterone

[fifty]

Original protocol was 80/500/.125 twice a week and I felt ok. Felt some flushing and red eyes the day of and day after my injections then felt good the final 24hrs before my next shot.

Switched to MWF 54/350/.125 for my second labs and now I’m noticing anxiety, irritability, etc the first two days after my shot. Usually feel good sunday eve-mon morning.

I seem to notice these negative effects starting maybe 4hrs post injection. I take everything at the same time.

My labs are here Need help managing hematocrit w/ labs

Could this be an issue with hcg or the ai? It was interesting to me that when i switched to mwf at basically the same weekly dose my e2 sensitive went up slightly despite the additional ai dose.

Any tips? Thanks!

 

[Vince Carter]

Since you chose M/W/F what day are you doing your blood draw? Monday? Note when you're feeling good Sun eve/Mon AM that you're in what I'd call an artificial low point because of how you choose to inject, you create this deeper trough than you have any other time of the week. So if you take blood on Mon Am, you see a landscape that doesn't exist through the rest of the week.

 

[fifty]

Right. Yes I did blood draws on Monday morning. Hmm

 

[S1W]

I looked at your labs and noticed your SHBG is on the higher side. In general, most guys reduce their total dose a bit as they increase injection frequency. I think this reduction in dosage with increasing injection frequency is even more important for guys that do not have low SHBG.

For an equivalent trough (slightly lower than your 80mg E3.5D trough) maybe try lowering it as low as like 40mg MWF? Anything much higher on MWF will likely put your trough higher for most of the week than it was on your 80mg E3.5D protocol. At 54mg MWF it's probably way higher throughout the week, which would explain why you're feeling better at the lowest point.

 

[Gman86]

The obvious standouts are the fact that your E2 is much too low compared to your SHBG.

The other thing is that your DHEA is way too low.

I don’t see how you could feel good considering both of those things. DHEA is an extremely underrated part of HRT. You get that up, and you’ll feel a big difference. You’ll also feel a lot better once your E2 is higher.

Oh wait, I was looking at your E2 on your 6-28 labs. It went up on your 9-24 labs. I would still say that it might be too low though, considering your SHBG is so high. Getting DHEA up would be my #1 focus if I was you. It’s just as important as testosterone. People just don’t talk about it as much, or realize how important it is.

 

[fifty]

I skipped a dose of hcg and I feel noticeably better.

Over xmas I went out of town and didn’t take my hcg along. Slept like a baby for a week. When I came back and resumed hcg is when I started noticing the difference in irritability and anxiety.

Also started a new bottle of hcg from empower. Previous empower bottles had like .5 grams of powder before mixing and this new one had like 2 grams. I assume that doesn’t matter but I was a very noticeable difference in dry contents.

I am going to ask my doc about lowering the hcg too. Maybe down to 250iu mwf? Is that logical? My current doc isn’t a fan of lowering dose but I wouldn’t mind cutting everything by 30%.

 

[Vince Carter]

I only use 200iu once per week, nuts not shrunken up. My clinic looks at me funny but HCG is more like just water to me, either seems to complicate things or it's use is completely transparent, has no positive effect on me in any way.

 

[S1W]

I stopped using HCG a year ago and feel better without it. I haven't taken calipers to 'em, but my nuts haven't seemed to notice.

 

[CoastWatcher]

HCG has done about as much for me as it does for my friend, @Vince Carter. I've gone without it for periods of time and really don't miss it. It's part of my protocol now because I'm a good soldier and my doctor, for whom Imhave great respect, asked me to use it.

 

[fifty]

I am thinking of dumping both hcg and ai. Too many variables here. Not feeling right in regards to anxiety and some depression symptoms.

So going from .46mg test 250iu hcg and .125ai mwf to .46mg test only mwf. Is that logical?

 

[Robotics]

I would make it more clear for people to understand your labs and type out your protocol, free T, Total, E2, SHBG, dhea etc for that period and do the same for your other protocol.

6/8 was 80/500/.125 and 9/24 was 54/350/.125 ? it is suprising that your free testosterone went up so much with more frequent injections. For that reason I am thinking I am interpreting this wrong.

how long have you been on the new protocol? on week two of my new protocol i got crazy anxiety but it resolved itself.

 

[fifty]

Ok I will post labs here for easier reading:

6/18 (80mg, 500iu, .125ai MTh) [labs done Monday AM before shot]
Test 1500+
FreeT 25.8
E2 sensistive 47.2
SHBG 66.7
HCT 54.5

12/2018 (54mg, 350iu, .125ai MWF) [labs done Monday AM before shot]
Test 1500+
FreeT 27.5
E2 sensistive 47.9
SHBG 70.4
HCT 53.8

I have already donated blood 3x in the past 7-8 months.

I am considering moving to (46mg test only MWF). Thoughts?

 

[Gman86]

I would make it more clear for people to understand your labs and type out your protocol, free T, Total, E2, SHBG, dhea etc for that period and do the same for your other protocol.

6/8 was 80/500/.125 and 9/24 was 54/350/.125 ? it is suprising that your free testosterone went up so much with more frequent injections. For that reason I am thinking I am interpreting this wrong.

how long have you been on the new protocol? on week two of my new protocol i got crazy anxiety but it resolved itself.

Just curious. So you went through 2 weeks of anxiety during your protocol change, but the after two weeks it went away?

 

[Vitamin_C]

I looked at your labs and noticed your SHBG is on the higher side. In general, most guys reduce their total dose a bit as they increase injection frequency. I think this reduction in dosage with increasing injection frequency is even more important for guys that do not have low SHBG.

For an equivalent trough (slightly lower than your 80mg E3.5D trough) maybe try lowering it as low as like 40mg MWF? Anything much higher on MWF will likely put your trough higher for most of the week than it was on your 80mg E3.5D protocol. At 54mg MWF it's probably way higher throughout the week, which would explain why you're feeling better at the lowest point.

Don't you mean for low-SHBG? Generally if SHBG is high, you give a larger dose which lowers SHBG. You lower the dose and increase injection frequency with low SHBG guys.

 

[Gman86]

Don't you mean for low-SHBG? Generally if SHBG is high, you give a larger dose which lowers SHBG. You lower the dose and increase injection frequency with low SHBG guys.

Has the whole giving one large injection to lower SHBG thing been proven? All I’ve seen is that it’s something that’s been passed around as fact, but never proven through studies or anectodal experiments. If it has been proven, I apologize. Just curious.

 

[Vitamin_C]

Has the whole giving one large injection to lower SHBG thing been proven? All I’ve seen is that it’s something that’s been passed around as fact, but never proven through studies or anectodal experiments. If it has been proven, I apologize. Just curious.

I know Dr. Crisler would do this for high SHBG guys. Think about bodybuilders using large amounts of anabolics, they all have very low SHBG because they are using large doses of anabolics which will drive down SHBG.

 

[Gman86]

I know Dr. Crisler would do this for high SHBG guys. Think about bodybuilders using large amounts of anabolics, they all have very low SHBG because they are using large doses of anabolics which will drive down SHBG.

So a few problems with that. Dr. Crisler used to abuse steroids, and came from the bodybuilder scene. So he could of viewed this as a fact due to everyone passing it around the bodybuilding scene that he was a part of. The other issue is, when guys do steroids, they usually do a few compounds at once. And there are a few compounds that directly cause the lowering of SHBG. I’m not sure of all of them, but I know for sure that Stanozolol (Winstrol) directly lowers SHBG. So it would be impossible to know whether one dose of testosterone per week, lowers SHBG more than frequent injections, of the guy was running multiple compounds.

The only way to prove this theory, would be to use straight testosterone, at a certain dose, and inject once weekly. Then that same guy, would have to keep the same dose of just testosterone, and inject either ED, or EOD, and check SHBG again. He could inject E3.5D, but not sure if the rise in SHBG would be significant enough, if it rose at all. Point is, I just don’t know if there’s any studies or anectodal experiments of guys testing this theory out the correct way. I’ve never seen them at least. So just wondering if this theory is purely theoretical or not.

 

[Vitamin_C]

So a few problems with that. Dr. Crisler used to abuse steroids, and came from the bodybuilder scene. So he could of viewed this as a fact due to everyone passing it around the bodybuilding scene that he was a part of. The other issue is, when guys do steroids, they usually do a few compounds at once. And there are a few compounds that directly cause the lowering of SHBG. I’m not sure of all of them, but I know for sure that Stanozolol (Winstrol) directly lowers SHBG. So it would be impossible to know whether one dose of testosterone per week, lowers SHBG more than frequent injections, of the guy was running multiple compounds.

The only way to prove this theory, would be to use straight testosterone, at a certain dose, and inject once weekly. Then that same guy, would have to keep the same dose of just testosterone, and inject either ED, or EOD, and check SHBG again. He could inject E3.5D, but not sure if the rise in SHBG would be significant enough, if it rose at all. Point is, I just don’t know if there’s any studies or anectodal experiments of guys testing this theory out the correct way. I’ve never seen them at least. So just wondering if this theory is purely theoretical or not.

Anavar, winstrol etc all lower SHBG. There are some studies on PubMed showing the lowering of SHBG after exogenous testosterone administration if you browse around.

 

[jhperez81]

I get irritable and somewhat depressed when I take anastrozole.

 

[Gman86]

Anavar, winstrol etc all lower SHBG. There are some studies on PubMed showing the lowering of SHBG after exogenous testosterone administration if you browse around.

Did they test the difference between infrequent and frequent injections, in regards to SHBG, while using the same dose of testosterone?